Hello wolves, here are some things I recommend for all players to get the most out of their location.

A. Make sure you have a high framerate. At least 60, if possible at least 100 in all situations. Turn down settings until your constantly have >60fps. Low FPS not only increases ping but makes the game harder to play in many ways. (thx tirza I think)

B. Look for the ISP in your area with lowest latency. Avoid dial-up and dsl (the first hop often adds 20ms), instead fiber-optic or cable internet is preferable. Almost everyone in central Europe + Britain can get 35-40 ping distance-wise, it's just a matter of getting the right provider. This is even more important if you live further away, such as the middle-east or the US. Ideally, east coast US should be able to get ~90 ping to UK, ~110 to Germany. Add up to 50ms as you go from east to west coast. Find the person in your country who has lowest ping and ask them what ISP they use. Even if you can't get the same one, you will have an idea of what latency is possible.

C. Use an ethernet cable instead of wifi if possible. (Not always going to do anything, but sometimes makes difference). (thx internet)

D. Make sure that Savage has as much bandwidth as it needs, throttling other applications (torrents, video), if necessary. (thx experience)

E. Use the command /cl_lerpShift 1 . This makes Savage display unit positions as soon as they are received from the server rather than with a 30ms delay. Noticeable improvement in flux accuracy, less lead needed with coil. Expect ragged unit movements (takes a bit of adjustment). 1 disables it, 0.4 is default, 0 maximizes the lerpshift. Use 1. (thx source code)

F. Use the command /cl_lerpObjectAngles 0 . This makes Savage display units' directions immediately instead of with a delay. Possibly useful in blocking, since you see where the beast unit is facing as soon as your client finds out. Expect ragged unit rotations. (thx source code)

G. Try disabling aero, it forces V-Sync and I felt a noticeable increase in responsiveness in Savage after disabling. My "humanbenchmark" reaction time also went down ~50ms, as with some other users. (thx internet)
Note that this benefit may be specific to Savage (not other games), because I think windows continues to render when savage is full screen.

H. Play Savage on a computer monitor, NOT on a television. Even better: a gaming or otherwise low-latency monitor, even better: an old CRT monitor. Displays add significant latency (~30ms). (thx bobbe) You can visit the displaylag.com database for details, noting that CRTs are pretty much guaranteed 0ms lag.

I. Use a computer mouse with a high polling rate (1000hz instead of 125hz, or 7ms difference). (thx bobbe, math)

J. Humans react faster to sound than to visuals (significantly so). Keep the game sound on (useful so you don't get sneaked up on too), and even try playing without music. (thx ultima)

K. For everyone, but especially high-pingers, there is a window of time after a block happens but before you actually find out if you blocked (window = ping + human reaction time, as it happens). Fortunately, you can still do useful things in this window, like use medkit, flux, or start swing. Careful with swings, if you missed your block you are vulnerable. (thx experience)

L. Turn off your windows firewall, and other antivirus firewalls. I think it improved my ping by about 5ms, but something else may have been the cause. Others online have said it helps. Be careful about this since it leaves you more susceptible to viruses, etc. I don't mind too much since I reinstall windows often anyway and I'm pretty careful about what I execute.

P. [UNTESTED] Lower the "Max Frames to Render Ahead" value on Nvidia cards down from 3. At 60fps 1 frame = 16ms so you can imagine the improvement. ATI Tray Tools enables an equivalent setting on Ati cards called Flip Queue size. You probably shouldn't go all the way down to 0, any decrease from 3 might cause a performance or visual loss.

Q. Disable VSync in-game and make sure your graphics card isn't forcing it. The technical reasons are not clear to me but the general consensus is that it adds significant and palpable input lag. If you must have it, capping to your monitor refresh - 1 might help, maybe. EG: /cl_hostmax 59

R. Give yourself time to adjust to latency improvements. Most advantages from lower ping take getting used to, like blocking later, leading coil and flux aim less, having more time to pursue melee attacks vs freeswing, etc.

Last edited by jazzking on 03 Sep 2014 17:27, edited 10 times in total.

While researching translatlantic latency I found this post by john carmack which confirms a lot of my points above, in particular about disabling aero, increasing USB polling rate, getting a good monitor, etc. I've added a point about multimonitor setups.